OTT Blog

Brace Yourselves, Google Penguin Update is Coming!

Google Penguin Update and the future of SEO

The Penguin Monster is preparing for the hunting season, and seems to be right around the corner. That´s right, all the SEO community is trying to read the signals Google spokespersons are sending every now and then, and many firms are trying to predict what the new Google Penguin Update might have in store for us.

As usual, the new Penguin Algo Update will target those sites that are deemed to be spamming. It will also despenalize those that have taken actions to clean their names. However, not knowing exactly the evaluation criteria used by the next Penguin update, gives all SEO experts and web designers little room for planning ahead or preparing for what’s to come. However, “little room” does not mean “no room”.

Not many people on earth has precise knowledge on how Google Algoes work. It means it takes quite a while to adapt to them once they roll out, and we have seen a lot of campaigns go belly up just because of a simple update. If a company´s main source of income revolves around Google traffic, and if it has been using manipulative tactics to get it, then it should really consider coming clean before it is too late.

Dispel the fog of war

It´s been more than 17 months since the last Penguin Update. It was supposed to happen during the last quarter of 2015 but Google postponed it because of the holidays. This leads us to think it might happen anytime now.

We believe that, as with any Google Penguin update, it is yet another attempt to go after unscrupulous people or SEO firms that engage in tactics that violate their guidelines. However, this new algo brings something new; it will be refreshing constantly or, as we like to say, it will be a real-time version.

After many years in the field, one gets to see how many companies end up hiring the wrong kind of individuals for their search engine optimization campaigns. Others believe they can outwit google just because, although Google´s guidelines clearly advice on the contrary and there have been a lot of websites that have suffered the consequences of angering them, there seem to be ways to get results really fast. These firms sometimes think they will never get caught, or just collect their money from unsuspecting clients and run away before the mighty and merciless Google hammer falls.

Google Penguin Update will finally dispel this kind of fog of war. This inability clients had to see the real intentions of some shady individuals will be lifted off. Unprofessional SEO firms will no longer take advantage of this latency between actions taken by them and later search engines reactions.

Our take on the issue

These things will be harder to do with an update of Penguin that refreshes constantly. Any company will be able to see if Google likes their SEO firm right away. Although many SEO agencies are nervous about this change of pace, the whole OTT staff is actually really excited about it. We believe this real-time update is certainly an improvement as it will allow us to fix anything that needs fine tuning and see the results almost immediately. We believe Google Penguin Update will help users tell good SEO experts from bad ones faster. Those so called SEO experts who resort to black hat practices will become exposed faster and you will be able to fix their mess in no time instead of waiting for the next update to have your ranking restored.

This real time update will not only allow us to follow more closely the evolution of our customers´ page rankings and be on top of everything that needs fine tuning. Short term results will give us more freedom to actually run our sealed experiments and learn more about the algorithm itself. OTT is extremely serious about research. It is the only way to have an objective measure on the things that affect your rankings the most.